The Last Child (48 page)

Just like that.

They let Johnny see his mother once a week for supervised visitation. They’d go to the park, sit in the shade. Each week, she brought Jack’s letters. He wrote at least one a day, sometimes more. He never discussed how bad it was in the place they’d sent him. Never about his hours, his days. Jack talked most of regret and shame and of how Johnny was the only good thing in his life. He talked of things they’d done together, plans they’d made for the future. And he begged to be forgiven. That’s how he ended all of his letters.

Johnny, please.

Tell me we’re friends.

Johnny read every letter, but never responded. They filled a shoe box under the bed at his foster house.

“You should write him back,” his mother told him once.

“After what happened? After what he did?”

“He’s your best friend. His father broke his arm. Think about that.”

Johnny shook his head. “There were a million times he could have told me. A million ways.”

“He’s young, Johnny. You’re both so very young.”

Johnny stared at the court-appointed monitor while the idea rolled in his mind. “Did you forgive Detective Hunt’s son?”

She followed Johnny’s gaze. The monitor sat at a nearby picnic table. She was hot in a blue suit too heavy for the season. “Hunt’s son?” she asked, voice distant. “He seems very young, too.”

“Are you seeing Detective Hunt?”

“Your father’s funeral is tomorrow, Johnny. How could I be seeing anyone?”

“It would be okay, I think.”

His mother squeezed his arm and stood. “It’s time.” The court monitor was approaching. “You have the suit?” she asked. “The tie?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like them?”

“Yes.”

They had a few seconds left. The next time they were together, it would be to bury the ones they loved most. The monitor stopped a few feet away. She gestured at her watch, and her face reflected something like regret.

Johnny’s mother turned away, eyes bright. “I’ll pick you up early.”

Johnny took her hand and squeezed. “I’ll be ready.”

The funeral was a double service. Father and daughter, side by side. Hunt called in favors and had the cemetery cordoned off to protect the family from the idle curious, the press. The priest was not the same fat, red-faced priest that Johnny remembered in such poor light. This was a young man, thin and serious, a blade of a priest in white, flashing robes. He spoke of choice and the power of God’s love.

Power.

He made the word sing, so that Johnny nodded when he said it.

The
power
of God’s love.

Johnny nodded but kept his eyes on the coffins and on the high blue sky.

The high, empty sky.

Three weeks after the funeral, Katherine stood in the yard of a well-maintained two-bedroom house. It had a covered front porch, two bathrooms, and the largest, greenest yard she could find. The kitchen was newly remodeled. Down the street was the house that Johnny had lived in all of his life, minus the last year or so. She’d hoped to buy that one, but the life insurance from her late husband had to last until she figured what to do with her life. How to make a living for her and her son.

She stared down the street, then let it go. This place had a tree house, a creek that ran through the backyard.

It would be enough.

When Hunt came out of the house, his shirt was wet with sweat. A tuft of fiberglass insulation sprouted from the back of his head. He turned and looked back at the house. “It’s solid,” he said. “It’s nice.”

“You think Johnny will like it?”

“I think so. Yes.”

Katherine dipped her head. “Johnny comes home tomorrow. We’ll need some time, you know. Just the two of us. Time to find some kind of rhythm.”

“Of course.”

“But in a month or so, I thought maybe you might come over for dinner.”

“That would be nice, too.”

Katherine nodded, nervous and scared and uncertain. She turned and looked at the house. “It really is okay, isn’t it?”

Hunt kept his eyes on her face. “It’s perfect.”

Summer heat was a fading memory when Johnny and his mother drove to Hush Arbor. It was Saturday, late afternoon. The trees towered over the car as she drove. Ahead, sunlight pushed through, and they could see granite posts and blackberry brambles. “I can’t believe you came out here like you did.”

“Chill, Mom.”

“Anything could happen way out here.”

Johnny pointed. “The cemetery is that way.” She drove as far as she could, then they got out. Johnny led her through the cut in the trees. “Detective Hunt says he was buried here last week. Some friend of his mother paid for it.” They walked farther. The paint on the fence was still white. The grass was long and gone to seed. “I should come out and mow sometime.”

“Please, don’t,” she said, but Johnny was already thinking about it.

They walked to where Levi Freemantle was buried. The earth was freshly turned. His daughter was beside him, and she, too, had a new stone. “Sofia,” Johnny said. “That was her name.” They looked at Freemantle’s headstone. It gave the dates of his birth and death. The inscription was simple.

Levi Freemantle

Last Child of Isaac

“I counted headstones,” Johnny said. “The night I spent out here. There are three for those who were hanged.” Johnny pointed to the small, rough stones at the base of the giant oak. “And forty-three descendants of Isaac Freemantle. Forty-five, now.” They looked across the rows of weathered stone. “If Isaac had been killed, hung like the others, then none of them would have lived or died.”

“Your great-great-grandfather was an exceptional man.” A pause. “So was your dad.” Johnny nodded, unable to speak. She went on, “Ken Holloway was as bad, that day, as I’d ever seen him.” She rubbed at her wrists, where scars still showed the deep bite of piano wire. “We might have died without Levi Freemantle.”

Silence. Sunlight on new-cut marble.

“He told me life is a circle.”

His mother looked at the trees, the rows of stone. She put an arm around Johnny’s shoulders.

“Maybe it is.”

That night, Johnny wrote to Jack. He told him everything that had happened in the months that he’d been gone. It took ten pages to do it. He addressed it to Jack Cross, My Friend.